


Purgatory

by roseofscotland



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 05:46:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseofscotland/pseuds/roseofscotland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seemingly abandoned by Castiel in Purgatory, Dean searches for his angel as the scar on his arm begins to burn, bringing him visions of his salvation four years ago. Castiel is on the run from Leviathan, clinging to Dean's prayers every night and keeping away from him during the day. Dean's stubborn refusal to leave without Cas leads them to a new understanding of one another and a way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank a few friends who helped a great deal in the development of this fic. They let me bounce ideas off them, encouraged me to keep writing, and helped me to improve it, so I'm extremely grateful to Erin, Jackie, Olivia, and Khayla for all their help and support.

Dean hadn’t thought about his scar in years. It had become a part of his daily life, a part of his body so familiar that he mostly forgot about it. The handprint on his left arm, usually covered by his clothes, had faded from its initial angry red swollenness to a light pink, the skin a little stretched like the other scars he’d picked up over the years. He got new scars often enough that, despite the unusual nature of the handprint and how he had gotten it, it had become commonplace to him. But now, in Purgatory of all places, it was making itself known again.

After a few sleepless nights in the forest, he’d found a deep, hollowed-out place in a rock to catch a couple of hours of sleep before he’d get up to search for Cas again. He couldn’t deny that it had hurt when he’d turned around, ready to talk out a plan with his friend or run with him or die with him, and found that he was alone in this place full of darkness and the worst monsters. For a little while, he had tried to justify Cas’s sudden disappearance, tried to excuse his being such a dick at the worst possible time, but at this point he had given up. Cas wasn’t himself, he had been through a lot, he was scared, whatever; point was, Dean was alone and had to fend for himself. Nothing unusual about that, and although it would have been a hell of a lot better to have Sammy there to watch his back, he preferred having his little brother safe on Earth.

When Dean finally got to sleep, he didn’t dream of Hell exactly. He’d dreamt of Hell too many times to count already, and he knew those dreams well. They filled him with a sickening, twisting, roiling mix of pain and horror and pleasure that made him want to do something drastic to stop feeling that way. No, he hadn’t dreamed of Hell in a long time, but now he found himself dreaming of something he didn’t even remember experiencing: his ascent from Hell.

It began with him standing over a rack, some poor soul stretched out and bleeding, as Dean looked to his tools to select a new, more terrible instrument. When he turned back to his victim, he found in its place a creature that filled him with terror. He couldn’t see a face, but he felt a sternness in the way it regarded him. It seemed to be made of a gloriously bright, pure white light that made him close his eyes against blinding himself. Behind it, he had caught a glimpse of what had seemed soft and shadowy, but with an undeniable power. _Wings?_

With his eyes squeezed shut he felt a burning hand close around his upper arm. It seemed to fuse with his skin, entering his flesh and branding him inside and out. A new sensation swept over him, the inverse of what he had come to know in Hell. He had grown used to the pain that drove him to pick up his instruments of torture those last ten years: the pain that stayed with him every fucking second until he gave it to others, cut them where he felt the searing of his own hatred, until he felt good again. This was a kind of pain, but it stemmed from a different source, one completely alien to him. Before it hurt, the hand gripping him seemed to transmute peace and beautiful, radiant goodness. The pureness of the good he felt was overwhelming, unfamiliar, and terrifying; it was wrong, it was too much, he didn’t _deserve_ to feel this. All at once the light became unbearable, shone brighter and seeped behind his eyelids and made him scream.

Then he was flying, soaring upward and spinning impossibly fast as the thing held him steady. It never spoke to him, never said a word at all—and if its appearance hurt him this badly, he feared what its voice might do—but he felt its gaze on him the entire time, watching him, _knowing_ him. The idea was unnerving.

Suddenly he was gasping in the darkness and his survival instinct kicked in, telling him to get out, get out GET OUT of there before he suffocated. Dean Winchester climbed out of his own grave and instantly forgot what—or who—had gotten him there.

Yes, he had forgotten—until he dreamed in Purgatory and felt the scorching hand on him when he woke.

\--

Castiel ran. He hid, sometimes, but he never wanted to risk staying out of sight for too long. If he were ever too difficult for Leviathan to find, he ran the risk that they would give up and search for Dean instead. He could not allow that. Though Dean could handle himself against other monsters, on his own he stood little chance against Leviathan. But it was Castiel they wanted, Castiel they hated beyond all measure, Castiel they would hunt until they had rent the flesh from his bones. He had released them from their prison in the first place, and having returned them to it, he was their primary target.

He’d been such a fool, power-mad and drunk with the idea that he could be God. It had turned him into something terrifying, one who judged and punished without compunction. His Father, if He was still alive, must have been so disappointed in His angel. The thought of it made Castiel want to curl up in shame, just lie still in the darkness and allow Leviathan to tear him apart as he deserved. He might have, if not for the thought of Dean. Dean, who had moved him to defy Heaven. Dean, who had trusted him even when he wasn’t worth trusting. Dean, who had found him and brought him back to life, who had taken him in even when he was insane and useless and a burden to him. Castiel had to keep Dean safe, and to do that he had to keep moving. If he was alive for one reason, it was to make sure that Leviathan had prey to chase until Dean found a way out of Purgatory.

He let himself rest sometimes and tried to keep the time of day inconsistent so that his pursuers couldn’t figure out a pattern. As a result, he was delirious much of the time and ran, gasping for breath, from tree to tree, never sure if the footsteps and rustling he heard behind him were real or hallucinated. The only image that stayed consistent in his mind was Dean. It didn’t help that many nights, if he tried to close his eyes, it wouldn’t be long before he heard Dean’s voice in his head. This, he knew, was neither memory nor dream nor hallucination; prayer had always been a different kind of sound in his mind, clearer at times even than his own thoughts. A few days after they arrived in Purgatory, Dean had begun to pray to him, and then every night. Sometimes his voice was tired and begged to know where Castiel was; sometimes it was breathless when he was clearly still on the run from something. At times it threatened even as it implored him to give some sign that he was still alive. Castiel wept at the desperation he heard in Dean’s whispered supplications, at the angry accusations that came when, every night, he refused to answer or try to find Dean. Every cell in his body longed to find his friend, to tell him that he was all right, to explain that he was helping him in the best way that he could by staying away from him. But even that was too big a risk.

So Castiel ran, and listened, and sometimes cried silent tears for his friend’s pain and fear. But he did not stop.

\--

With Dean’s dreams of leaving Hell came a searing reminder of what he’d felt when the creature—what must have been Cas—had gripped his arm. The dream would wake him up and he would bite his knuckles, trying not to scream, until they bled. Even an echo of that first burn was excruciating, and once when he tore off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve to look at his arm he found it as swollen and red as it had been the day he crawled out of the earth. When he was a little more used to the pain, he concentrated and thought he could feel a steady, rhythmic pulsing in his arm, almost like a second heartbeat.

“Cas,” he muttered one night as he hid in the hollow of a tree, “it’s like I can feel your hand on me again. Shit, Cas, it hurts. Why won’t you let me find you? I need to know why this is happening. I need you so we can find a way outta here.” He grimaced as another bolt of pain shot through him. “Goddammit, Cas!”

One thought that made him smile every now and then was that Cas—if he could even hear him—might be embarrassed by how much Dean swore at him when he prayed. He bet he’d never heard so many fuck yous in anyone’s prayers before, but it served him right for leaving Dean alone in a darkness full of creatures dying for a bite of human flesh.

“Just so you know,” he added as he picked up his makeshift axe to begin the day, “no matter how much of a _dickhead_ you’re being right now, I’m not leaving this place without you. Wherever the fuck you are, I’m gonna find you and we’re getting out together. Wouldn’t hurt if you’d make it a little easier, though.”

He started off  in the direction he’d been going before he stopped to get an hour or two of sleep, senses alert in anticipation of any monsters that might try to sneak up on him. He’d already ganked plenty of vampires and werewolves and shapeshifters, but so far it had only been creatures he’d met and killed on Earth that attacked him here. A couple of Leviathans when he first arrived, too, but luckily they’d been staying away since then. One thing that worried Dean in the back of his mind was when the creatures he’d never seen or even heard of would come out.

When the first vampire of the day flew at him from behind a tree, he was ready. Killing nasty sons of bitches was in his blood; he’d been doing it ever since Dad had let him join him on his hunts, long enough that he could run on pure instinct if he wanted to. In Purgatory, he found he had many more things to think about than where the next attack was coming from, so he set his body on autopilot and tried to figure those things out. Principle among them, unsurprisingly, was Cas.

He was pretty clear on how he felt about Cas. Dean had known for a while that he could sometimes be into guys, though he hadn’t made a big deal of “coming out” to Sammy or anything like that. Definitely not to Dad. Who gave a shit, anyway, when you’re doing more important things than worrying about who you like to fuck? Sam had never commented on it if Dean flirted with a guy for a case or brought one back to the motel every so often. Little things like that reassured Dean that Sam didn’t think any differently of him for it, and he had needed that sometimes when he’d been feeling particularly shitty about himself. He wondered if Sam had noticed that Dean had stopped bringing guys back after he got to know Cas.

Dean only ever said that he thought of Cas as his family as much as Bobby or Sam, but in reality it was much more than that. He didn’t have words for what he felt because he never let himself say it out loud, never even thought it out in his mind. It just _was_. It was one of those things that would seem wrong if he told someone, that defied explanation in words because it existed only in looks and thoughts and absences felt too sharply. In Purgatory, it had become a physical need to see that Cas was alive, to just be _near_ him again. And no matter what Dean might silently want, he had to find Cas so that they could escape, get back to Earth, and keep fighting where it would actually make a difference. He wanted them to have a future beyond this place, whether or not Cas knew how he felt.

He had no idea if Cas could even feel the same way about a human. As close as they’d become and as much as Cas had changed over the years, the angel was still damn hard to read. Better not to let himself wish for it; even if Cas did feel the same way, there was no way it would end well. Only with more heartbreak, and they’d all had more than enough of that already.

Dean swung his axe through the neck of his third vampire for the day, growled an expletive, and moved on to look for his angel.

 --

Castiel found that the longer he was in Purgatory, the more he looked forward to hearing Dean’s prayers every night. He was thankful he didn’t need to sleep and risk missing one of them, although he suspected they would reach him even in his dreams. He held onto the certainty of the prayers each night, survived each day because he knew he’d hear Dean’s voice calling him soon. It became his only link to reality, to whatever life there had been before the woods and running and sweat and blood.

Of course, no amount of pain or exhaustion or fear could make him forget what he had done. Nothing could make him forget that he deserved this, that he deserved _worse_ for what he’d done in Heaven and on Earth. _Murderer, liar, traitor._ His crimes against humanity and against his own kind replayed in his mind almost as often as Dean’s prayers did, always reminding him that while it was imperative that Dean escape from Purgatory, Castiel himself could not. If his Father was still alive, he knew it must have been His will that brought Castiel to this dark, terrible place. This must be his punishment and penance for his sins. But if one deed might count for something, if one thing might redeem him even a little, it would be ensuring that Dean Winchester made it back to Earth and to his brother.

His personal feelings didn’t matter. If anything, it was better that he not see Dean again, better that Dean escaped thinking Castiel was either long gone or dead. He was afraid that if he did see Dean again his will would break and he would make the selfish choice. But he didn’t deserve to be happy anymore, if he ever had. He deserved everything Purgatory had to offer and worse.

It wasn’t until daylight filtered through the trees (the sun never rose or set in Purgatory; Castiel thought it was probably too beautiful a phenomenon for God to have allowed it here) and it was morning again that Castiel realized that none of Dean’s prayers had come to him in the night. He searched his memory, but no, only the echoes of the prayers he repeated to himself to remember Dean’s voice answered him. He considered taking flight above the trees, scanning the ground to make sure Dean was not hurt, but stopped himself. _That_ would be the selfish thing. No, Dean could take care of himself, so he couldn’t be seriously wounded or dead – Castiel was certain that he would have felt something, that their bond was such that he would have known if Dean were seriously injured. Could it be that he’d finally escaped? When he thought about it, Castiel doubted that any prayers could reach him in Purgatory if Dean were on Earth. This place was too closed off from any kind of goodness to allow them through.

The idea that Dean might have simply stopped praying, might have given up on Castiel was too difficult to consider, so he chose to believe that Dean was gone. By some miracle he must have made it out of Purgatory. He was safe. As relieved as Castiel was at the thought, he couldn’t deny feeling a painful twist in his stomach that reminded him distantly of the knife Dean had plunged into his chest when they first met.

No matter. In any case, if Dean was safe, Castiel didn’t need to run anymore. Leviathan wanted him; well, now they could have him. He stopped in the middle of a clearing and stood still. Now he would wait. God knew he was good at that.

That, and bleeding for a Winchester.

\--

Dean didn’t know what the hell was going on, but Purgatory was going nuts.

He’d woken to a sick feeling in his stomach and thud after thud of black goo hitting the ground and materializing into what looked like humans in black suits. They ran past him, hurrying toward a nearby clearing. _Leviathans_.

But why were they ignoring him? He’d have thought he would be pretty high on their shit list considering how many he had ganked back on Earth, but maybe they had a bigger enemy they were jonesing to kill. He thought about it for about two milliseconds before—

_Cas. CAS!_

All thought disappeared except for that imperative: Cas was alive. Cas was nearby. All the Leviathan in Purgatory were completely ignoring Dean because they had finally cornered the man who had put them back in this shithole.

“Fuck! CAS!” Dean bellowed, any thought for caution gone as he gripped his axe tight and sprinted through the creatures, who continued largely to ignore him in favor of reaching their biggest target.

“Dean?” He heard a gravelly croak send out his name in a horrified question. “Dean, no!”

“Cas!” Dean repeated as he burst into the clearing and finally saw his angel. He was filthy and he had a beard going, and his eyes were terrified as they lit on Dean. Leviathan were close to reaching them now, barely on Dean’s tail as they raced toward their prize. “What the hell are you doing, standing still when you know that’s what they want?”

“Dean, you shouldn’t have come. They’ll kill you,” Cas said desperately.

“I’m not leaving you, Cas, we’ve come too far. We’ve survived this long!” Dean said and turned around to decapitate the first Levi that got close enough. “Are you gonna help me or not?”

Cas grunted in response and punched a monster that nearly knocked him over, it was running so fast. The next one he grabbed by the neck and applied two fingers to its forehead, killing it in a blast of white light. He didn’t know how long they fought; all he could measure was how long it took until their voices were raw, Dean’s axe was covered in black goo, and Cas’s grace was nearly drained. They’d thinned the crowd attacking them, but there were too many closing in even as new ones materialized.

“Dean,” Cas said hoarsely, “you should run while I have them distracted. You don’t need to fight anymore. I’m the one they want.”

“Cas, shut the fuck up. I told you I’m not leaving. If you have some angel trick up your sleeve to get us out of here, I wouldn’t mind, but I’ll die here with you if I have to,” Dean said through gritted teeth.

“I might have enough to—” Cas broke off and lunged toward Dean, holding onto him tightly as Leviathans closed in. They fell to the ground, but they were no longer in the clearing; they were at the mouth of a cave, definitely still in Purgatory, but somewhere far away from the mass of Leviathans.

The angel’s arms went limp around him; he had passed out. “C’mon, Cas,” Dean muttered and dragged him into the cave. He didn’t know exactly how far Cas had brought them or how well Leviathan could sniff them out, but he figured it bought them enough time to build a shelter here. Cas obviously wasn’t going anywhere, so he had no other choice. He wouldn’t let them be separated again.

\--

Castiel awoke to darkness and something like a pillow beneath his head. He tried to sit up but felt dizzy and put his head down again.

“Cas? You awake?” He heard the gruff whisper in the dark and felt a little more lightheaded even though his head still rested on what he realized was a folded leather jacket.

“Dean,” he mumbled. “You shouldn’t be here, they’ll find me and—”

“Shh, Cas. Don’t worry about it. You zapped us away, I don’t know how far, but we’re okay for now. Must’ve used up most of your mojo, though.”

“My powers are significantly diminished, yes. Which means I can’t protect you if they find us again.”

“Cas, you’re really not getting that I don’t give a shit. I’m staying with you.” Dean raised his voice a little in annoyance but remembered himself and lowered it again. “When you’re strong enough, we’re getting outta here. Together. Got that?”

Cas sighed. “Yes, Dean.”

“Good. Now get some rest and get those angel juices flowin’ again.”

Cas chuckled a little and closed his eyes, though he found that now that he was conscious again, sleep was unnecessary. Rest, yes, but he could rest and remain awake. Still, Dean probably expected him not to talk for a while, so he decided to lie quietly in the dark and wait for his grace to replenish itself. He focused on the sound of Dean’s measured breathing to calm himself, as a sort of meditation, though somewhere in the back of his mind he thought he should probably meditate on something to do with God as opposed to Dean Winchester. Oh, well.

Dean’s breathing suddenly became irregular and broke his concentration. It started coming raggedly and in gasps, and though Dean seemed to be trying not to make noise, Cas could hear that he was beginning to cry. He couldn’t see very well in the dark where Dean was, but he crawled slowly toward the broken sound of his friend’s weeping until his hand found one of Dean’s shoes where he sat against the cave wall. He pulled himself up, ignoring the vertigo that threatened his ability to remain conscious, until he was sitting beside Dean, who was no longer making any attempt to hide his tears.

Cas wrapped his arms around Dean and began to sing the first song that occurred to him. It was a hymn, so Dean probably didn’t know it, but it seemed to fit.

" _Comfort, comfort, ye my people, speak ye peace, thus saith our God. Comfort those who sit in darkness, mourning ‘neath their sorrows’ load. Speak ye to Jerusalem of the peace that waits for them. Tell her that her sins I cover, and her warfare now is over._ "

As he sang, Dean cried harder, burying his face in Cas’s shoulder, so Cas held him close until he began to quiet down. Neither of them could tell how long they stayed like that, Cas rocking Dean gently back and forth as Dean breathed him in and fisted one hand in his dirty trench coat as though reassuring himself that it was real, that Cas was real.

“I thought you were gone for a while there, Cas. You were out for more than a day and barely breathing. I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m right here, Dean,” Cas murmured, sifting his fingers through Dean’s hair. He felt Dean sigh against him, all the tension leaving his body as he relaxed against the angel.

“They won’t stay away forever. They’ll find us,” Dean said after a while.

“I know. I would have preferred that you had stayed away.”

“Do you want me to go?” Dean asked suddenly, raising his head. Even in the darkness Cas could feel Dean’s eyes on him, knew there must be hurt in them.

“No. I wanted you to be safe, so I kept away from you. But… I don’t want you to go away again,” Cas said slowly. Dean was quiet for a while, but Cas felt a tenseness between them, as though Dean was about to say something.

“Cas?” came his voice, husky, in the dark.

"Yes, Dean?"

“I need to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Cas’s breath hitched in his throat. When had his body become so dependent on the breaths and words of the man in his arms?

“I don’t know what this’ll mean to you, if it means anything, but I have to say it. I don’t think I can die knowing I never told you.”

Cas swallowed, forcing his mind to skip over the thought that _Dean is going to die_ so he could respond. “Told me what?”

Dean blew out a long breath through his lips and it tickled Cas’s skin a little bit.

“That I love you, Cas.” Barely a whisper.

Cas let out a long sigh and shook his head, though he knew Dean couldn’t see it, and rubbed the man’s back slowly. “Dean… I’m an angel of the Lord.”

“I know, you told me the first time I met you,” Dean grumbled. “The title gets old.”

Cas laughed a little. “Not to me. My point is that my Father _made_ me from love. Love means more to me than anything else in Creation. I may feel things… differently from the way humans do, but I certainly understand love.” He paused, shook his head. “I didn’t used to, I suppose, before I met you. Being an angel became more about following orders than anything else. But you—”

“Cas,” Dean interrupted.

"Yes, Dean?"

“Shut up.” Dean was still holding onto his coat, but his grip had become more insistent, and it occurred to Cas that Dean was actually pulling him closer, if that were possible. Dean’s free hand reached out blindly in the dark, found Cas’s face and guided him closer until their foreheads touched, a little too quickly and it hurt and Cas had to squeeze his eyes shut to counteract the dizziness. Dean laughed low in his throat and muttered something like ‘stupid-ass angel,’ then tilted his head until their noses were touching, and it seemed strange to Cas that he should be doing this, but being so close to Dean felt absolutely _right_ and a part of him that he knew was being selfish wanted Dean to be infinitely closer, which wasn’t possible, and—

Dean’s lips touched his and it felt like completion. He began to tremble, and every movement of those chapped, smiling lips against his mouth made him pull Dean closer until he realized that it might be too tight, but Dean held onto him like a man clutching at his last breath. Then their mouths were open – Cas didn’t remember it happening, but suddenly it _was_ , and it was _good_ – and Cas was tasting him and even moaning a little, which only made Dean kiss him harder. Cas didn’t know precisely how this worked, when one was supposed to break away or breathe, and he didn’t want to, but the lightheadedness was coming back and he didn’t want to black out again. He pulled back, gasping, and felt Dean nuzzle into his neck in the sudden absence of his lips.

“Fuck, Cas, you really need a shave,” Dean said when he’d caught his breath.

“It’s not as though there are razors readily available in Purgatory,” Cas said indignantly.

“I’m just kidding.” Dean pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and leaned his forehead against Cas’s again. “Was that… okay? It wasn’t just me wanting that?”

“ _No,_ Dean. Stupid-ass… human,” Cas said, trying to mimic Dean’s tone from before. He felt Dean shake with silent laughter. “Yes, I wanted that. These things are new to me, but one thing does make sense, and that’s what I want: you. I don’t know how you would propose to go about it, but I don’t want to be separated from you. Even if we die here.”

“Oh, Romeo,” Dean said sarcastically, but sobered quickly. “Nah, I get what you mean. I don’t wanna be separated either. I wish we could get out of here, but I’m not sure that’s gonna happen. I was so focused on finding you, I never tried to figure a way out.”

Cas sighed. “Facing almost certain death together… I think we’ve been here before.”

“Hey,” Dean reached up to cup Cas’s face and kissed him softly, chastely. “Remember when I said I’d rather have you? I meant it, and I still mean it.” Though Cas couldn’t see it, he could hear the smile in Dean’s voice.

“Well, you have me.”

Something about that must have been special, because Dean’s lips found his and didn’t break away for quite a while, even when Cas got dizzy again.

\--

It was morning, and little streams of light entered the cave between the rocks Dean had piled at the entrance. They were lying facing one another, and Cas’s hand was resting on Dean’s arm, on the scar he’d left there four years ago.

“You really did grip me tight,” Dean said.

“What do you mean?” Cas asked.

“With your hand, when you pulled me out of Hell. The scar is really something.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Cas said, amused, “but my true form does not actually have hands, Dean. You must be remembering it differently.”

“Then why do I have a scar like this?”

“Let me…” Cas rolled up Dean’s sleeve and laid his hand directly on the scar, fitting his fingers to each part of the print so that it lined up exactly. It felt warm suddenly, not the searing pain from his dreams but a pleasant warmth that spread through his arm and into the rest of his body before Cas pulled away.

“Cas,” Dean said after a moment. “What did you do? When you pulled me out?”

Cas cleared his throat. “I pulled your soul out of Hell first, and then I had to reconstitute your body—hellhounds plus four months of decomposition would not have been a welcome sight to your brother, after all, and—”

“Yeah, Cas, I get that. The handprint?”

“I don’t know, exactly. There was something about you—my orders were vague at the time, and I hadn’t been told _why_ I had to rescue you from Hell—but when I first held your soul, some part of me knew it would be difficult to let you go when my work was done. So once I had rebuilt your body and joined it with your soul, I concentrated my grace into a single moment as I let go of your arm, and it left the handprint. The first evidence of your inspiring my disobedience, perhaps.” Dean saw Cas lick his lips and purse them. “I didn’t realize that it would be so painful at the time, so I apologize for that.”

“It’s, uh, okay. It didn’t hurt very long, and I guess now it sort of… makes sense. Considering, you know, this,” he said, gesturing awkwardly between the two of them. “But it did start hurting again once we got here. I had these dreams that would wake me up, and my scar felt like it was on fire.”

“What did you dream of?” Cas breathed, eyes locked onto Dean’s.

Dean hesitated a moment. “You. When you saved me from the Pit. It’s weird, though, ‘cause I didn’t actually remember what it was like until I dreamt it.”

“Strange, that being here should make you remember.”

“Yeah.” Dean looked down, searching his mind for the thread of something that he’d thought of when Cas had been speaking. Something about grace—“Cas, you said you concentrated your grace into your hand when you marked me, right?”

"Essentially, yes."

“This might be crazy, but is it possible the grace is still there?”

Cas looked bewildered. “In your _arm?_ ”

“Yeah! I mean, why else would it be acting weird now unless there was still some mojo going on in there?” Dean smirked a little.

Cas furrowed his brow, his eyes darting back and forth as though reading invisible pages of text. “I suppose it could be possible—my grace was stronger, in some ways, before I felt doubt. I wonder if it reacts to our being in a place of damnation, albeit one not as horrific as Hell itself.”

“Could be, right? Maybe your old grace can—can—”

“—raise us from perdition once again?” Cas finished, breaking into a smile.

Dean answered him with a long kiss, refusing to care that he was shaking from love and giddiness. Probably being too hopeful, because when did things ever go the way Dean Winchester wanted them to? But he didn’t care. It was pretty much their only shot at getting out of Purgatory, so they might as well press their luck.

Cas’s hands wandered a bit, having learned from Dean’s hands on him, but Dean forced himself to pull away before they reached the point of no return. “Not now, okay, Cas?” he whispered, pressing their cheeks together. “You have no idea how much I want you, but not here. I want it to be better than that.” Cas nodded and Dean had to smile at the feeling of his rough beard scratching Dean’s face. “Do you know what to do, if we’re gonna try this?”

“Not really,” Cas said in a flat tone. “I’ll have to wing it, I suppose.”

“Did you seriously just—did you mean to say that?” Dean asked, beginning to laugh.

"Mean to say what?"

“You’ll have to _wing_ it, and it’s funny because, you know, you’re… an angel, and you have wings.” He pouted. “It’s not as funny when I have to explain it, man.”

“Oh, I see.” Cas chuckled anyway. He stood, and Dean followed suit. “Do you trust me, Dean?”

“The fact that you’re asking makes me nervous, but yes, Cas. I trust you.”

“Good. Roll up your sleeve.” Dean complied, and Cas grasped him around the shoulders with both hands. He repeated the movement from before, aligning his hand with the faded handprint scar on Dean’s shoulder. Dean felt the warmth begin to spread through him again, and it felt like an echo of that pure goodness he remembered from his dream. The perfect, radiant good he’d felt when Cas first touched him.

“Do you feel that?” he asked softly. Cas’s eyes were closed.

“Yes. But I don’t know how to proceed.”

Dean bit his lip and closed his eyes, too, though he didn’t have a reason to. “Maybe – think about how it felt when you pulled me out the first time. Remember how sure you were that you could do it.” He didn’t know where the words were coming from now, but he knew Cas was responding to them from the strength of his grip on Dean’s arms. “Remember what you first thought when you laid your hands on me in Hell.” He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry at the thought.

“ _Mine,_ ” Cas said in what almost sounded like a growl.

Dean made a note to remember that for later.

“Remember what you said when it was done, Cas? What you said so loud that no one could help hearing it?”

“ _Dean Winchester is saved,_ ” Cas intoned without hesitating.

Something in the way he spoke resonated more deeply than was possible for human vocal cords, reverberated in Dean’s head long after the words had left the angel’s lips.

“ _Dean Winchester is saved,_ ” Cas repeated again and again, chanting it like a spell or a prayer or some combination of the two as the warmth in Dean’s body intensified and focused into a column of heat surrounding them both. His eyes were still closed, but he sensed that if he opened them he would be blinded by the light that must be enveloping them. They stayed that way, anchored together for what seemed like a very long time, until Dean heard Cas say his name.

“Dean, open your eyes. Look.”

He did, and was met with a sight that very  nearly mirrored his homecoming four years earlier – they stood in what once must have been a forest but was now a perfect circle of felled trees with the two of them at its center. Purgatory had been a vast forest, too, but this felt immediately different: there was no tension, no fear, no metallic stink of blood in the air.

No, this wasn't Purgatory.

They were back.

\--

The long walk out of the wilderness back to civilization was familiar to Dean, but Cas had never walked for such a long time before. Dean didn’t seem to mind stopping so that Cas could rest every so often (and it was more often than not), especially considering the toll that transporting them back to Earth had taken on him. He was exhausted, true, but something else felt very wrong. He felt wounded somehow, as though some part of him had been torn out and he was still bleeding. But there was no blood. No new wounds that hadn’t been inflicted by Purgatory’s monsters before they left. A terrible thought took root in the back of his mind, but he tried to ignore it, to ignore the possibility that he feared more than almost anything. He tried not to be a burden to Dean, who insisted that of course he wasn’t a burden, but they had to stop often enough that it likely took them three times as long to find a small town than it would have otherwise. He let Dean do the talking; he’d done this before, knew what was needed in order to get by until they found people they knew again.

Dean told him they had landed somewhere in Wisconsin. Cas nodded and let Dean take care of the rest. He didn’t ask how Dean got his hands on enough money for a night in a motel. He didn’t ask how Dean got them each a fresh set of clothes. He didn’t ask how Dean managed to get a cellphone and to remember the numbers of Sam’s various throwaway phones. One of them finally worked, and it was arranged that Sam would drive up from where he’d been staying near Chicago to get them in the morning.

When Cas stepped out of the bathroom in a fresh suit and tie—he didn’t ask how Dean had known his size, either—he found Dean sitting on the bed, waiting for him.

“You know, you didn’t have to get all dressed up. We don’t need to leave the room until tomorrow,” Dean said with a little laugh.

“Oh, right.” Cas huffed and shrugged out of his jacket, leaving it on a chair, and moved to loosen his tie.

“Hey, hold up. Let me help you with that.” And then Dean was standing in front of him, hands pushing Cas’s own away from the tie, but he made no move to undo the knot. He ran his fingers over the material before looking up at Cas, and there was something fierce in the way he held his gaze. Suddenly Cas was being pulled by his tie until Dean’s lips met his, and he noticed that Dean had to bend down just a little to make up for the height difference, and then he didn’t notice anything beyond thoughts like _lips_ and _hands_ and _tongue_ and _bed_ as Dean pushed him onto it. Even as tired and wounded as Cas had felt the past few days, he felt himself come alive beneath Dean as the other man knelt above him and kissed all the breath out of him.

He felt his tie being undone at last, sliding out from his collar with a whisper of heat from the friction, and the first couple of buttons on his shirt being unfastened by nimble fingers.

“Cas, listen,” Dean breathed against the shell of his ear. “You’re still a virgin, right?”

“Yes,” Cas answered, and it came out more strangled than he’d intended.

“Okay. If you wanna do this, you just tell me if you want to stop, or something’s wrong, all right?” His voice hitched on the word _wrong,_ as though doing something wrong to Cas were the most frightening thing in the world to him.

“All right. But, Dean,” Cas said, leaning in close to whisper in Dean’s ear, “I am not fragile, as you seem to think. You won’t break me. And it’s not as though I’m completely ignorant of things… carnal.” He left the last word on a growl and nipped Dean’s earlobe, earning him the sight of Dean’s eyelids fluttering shut. He moved his lips to Dean’s neck and kissed it tenderly, kissed a trail up to his jaw and finally to his mouth, which opened and welcomed his tongue.

“That’s good, Cas,” Dean said as he pressed his lips to the skin on Cas’s throat. “But I think you could do with a little more roughing up.” What had been a kiss became a bite, and Dean sucked at the pale skin there until bruises blossomed beneath it. “I’ve got my own way of marking what’s mine.”

The words sent a jolt of need straight to Cas’s groin. He’d felt traces of this, little moments of attraction to Dean long before they’d kissed and a little more when they’d first touched like this in Purgatory, but he’d never been hard before. He’d never felt desire build in him until he felt he might burst, never felt another man’s arousal pressed against his own. Dean was taking his time at unbuttoning Cas’s shirt, kissing a trail downward over each inch of skin he laid bare. Once it was finally off, Cas impatiently tugged Dean’s t-shirt over his head and tossed it to the side, making Dean laugh at the petulant face he made. He leaned down to kiss away his angel’s frown and slowly ground his hips against Cas, then unfastened their pants to ease the tension now that they were both fully hard.

“Dean,” Cas grunted, pulling him down to suck at his neck as Dean had done earlier.

“Yeah, Cas?” Dean asked, voice low and hoarse with need.

“I need you to go faster.”

Dean didn’t reply except to pull Cas’s pants down to his knees and palm his erection through his boxers. “Fast enough for you?” he growled.

“No,” Cas growled right back. He yanked Dean’s pants and underwear down and grasped his cock firmly, if a little roughly, and began to pump his hand along the shaft. Dean smirked and answered in kind, freeing Cas’s dick so they could rub together. Cas let out a little groan of pleasure, hesitant, not sure if he should make noise. But Dean’s breath quickened at the sound and he stroked faster, lubricated the two cocks with their pre-come as he sank his teeth into Cas’s shoulder.

Cas arched against Dean, reveling in the perfection of so much skin against skin and the myriad new sensations building inside him. He’d lied a little in claiming that he wasn’t ignorant – he _knew_ some things, yes, but he hadn’t ever felt any of it firsthand. Truthfully he was unnerved as much as he was enthralled by the pressure he felt building in his cock, the sense of reaching an almost unbearable peak of pleasure. Suddenly he felt warmth spill over both their hands and heard his own long, relieved moan as Dean continued to rub him, trying harder to reach his own orgasm. Cas reached up and grasped Dean’s arm, sinking his nails into the scarred skin.

“Mine,” he whispered in the hollow of Dean’s ear, and then he felt the stickiness of Dean’s climax on them both.

“Fuck, Cas,” Dean whispered before he collapsed on top of him.

“Yes, we did,” Cas agreed.

It didn’t take them long to fall asleep in each other’s arms. Cas with his righteous man, Dean with his angel.

\--

Dean got back to the room by eight o’clock the next morning, shopping bag in hand, to find Cas still asleep in bed. Funny, he thought, since Cas didn’t need sleep. He sat down on the edge and watched him sleep for a while. He’d never seen Cas’s face so relaxed before; he was always thinking or puzzling over something or looking confused at a reference he didn’t understand. In sleep, his chest rose and fell slowly and he pursed his lips a little in a way that made Dean smile and want to kiss him awake.

He must have watched him longer than he realized, long enough for the sunlight to have moved to shine on Cas’s eyes. He blinked and scrunched up his face, using a hand to shield his eyes from the brightness.

“Hey,” Dean said softly.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said after a moment and smiled.

“Get up and put some clothes on, I got something for you.”

Cas grumbled a little but rolled out of bed and pulled some pants on, leaving his shirt unbuttoned. “What is it? I was very comfortable.”

“I know, but this’ll be worth it.” Dean pulled what he’d bought out of the bag and shook it out, holding it up proudly for Cas to see. The pale material was clean and new, neatly creased, not yet shaped by the body that would wear it as it had worn the dirty one left crumpled in the corner.

“You bought me a new trench coat?” The sleep was gone from Cas’s eyes now and he was grinning, looking back and forth from Dean to the coat.

“Yeah. I didn’t know if you really cared about it, but you kinda looked wrong without it. To me, anyway. Not that you were wearing anything last night anyway, which was new, but—”

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas said and shut him up with a kiss. Dean relaxed and smiled into it, lingering a moment before pulling back.

“So you like it?”

“Yes. I’ll finish getting dressed so I can put it on.”

When he was finished – shirt buttoned and tucked in, tie tied (backward, since for whatever reason Cas didn’t seem to know how to tie a tie right), and suit jacket put on – Dean held out the coat and helped him into it. He couldn’t help sliding his hands over Cas’s shoulders as the angel looked in the mirror and smiled approvingly. He looked almost as new as the coat, if you ignored the lines in his forehead and the tiredness in his eyes. Which reminded Dean—

“Hey, Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?”

“You know you don’t have to pretend to sleep for my benefit, right? I know you don’t need it, and it doesn’t matter to me that I was the only one actually sleeping in the bed.”

Cas’s face took on a perplexed expression in the mirror and he spun around to face Dean. “I wasn’t pretending to sleep, Dean. I really was asleep.”

“But I thought angels didn’t sleep?”

“I suppose we could if we wanted to, but I have never felt a biological imperative to sleep. Last night, I think… I did it without meaning to,” he said. His eyes were far away, confused, even a little afraid.

“What does that mean, Cas?” Dean thought he knew, but neither of them wanted to say it.

“At the very least, it means that my human vessel’s needs are making themselves known. And they haven’t before.”

“Could you, uh, could you try turning on angel radio or something? See if you can hear what they’re saying?” Dean asked.

“I don’t want to hear what they’re saying, Dean. I don’t know if I can bear to know what has happened since I wrought so much destruction in Heaven.” Cas’s tone hadn’t changed, but there was a deep pain and vulnerability in his eyes that made Dean want to look away.

“Okay, that’s fine, you don’t have to. You could… try to read my mind?”

“You would allow me to read your thoughts?”

“Yeah. Not anytime you want, but just as a test, sure.”

Cas nodded and looked at Dean with a little more intensity, and Dean did his best not to think reprehensible thoughts until Cas’s expression relaxed again, but his brow was wrinkled with concern.

"I couldn't hear anything."

Dean pressed his lips together and tried to think of some other way they could test this. “Do you think you have enough grace to try beaming to the other side of the room? Or, I dunno, set something on fire?”

Cas looked toward the opposite corner, then stared hard at a lampshade, but nothing happened.

“Were you trying just now, or—”

“Yes, I was trying, Dean!” Cas said, raising his voice.

“Okay, sorry! I’m just worried,” Dean said, putting up his hands in defense.

Cas sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “No, I’m sorry. Nothing is working, and since we got back I’ve been in some pain…”

Silence grew thick between them until Dean murmured, “Anna said it hurt, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Cas said flatly, and neither of them needed to say it now. He went to sit on the bed and stared into space, and the empty sadness in his eyes terrified Dean. He sat next to him and put an arm around his shoulders as silent tears began to streak Cas’s cheeks.

“You’re still my angel, Cas,” was the only thing he could think to say. Cas looked at him then and his gaze wasn’t empty anymore. It was full of Dean.

Cas kissed him and it tasted salty. They lay together on the bed and surrendered everything to one another, because even if Cas couldn’t be an angel of the Lord, he could certainly be an angel for Dean Winchester.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
